Jeannie has taught ESL full time at Bakersfield College since 2000, currently serving as Chair of the department. Her formal education and professional experience has long focused on ESL. She received her BA in Audiology and Speech Pathology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and her MA in English from San Francisco University with an emphasis in Teaching English as a Second Language. She also studied in Sweden and at the University of Bergen in Norway and taught ESL in Japan for three years. As a result of these experiences, she is fluent in Swedish, Norwegian, and conversational Japanese and has a deep understanding of learning a second language in a different culture. Her teaching experience is varied and extensive. She taught ESL Composition and trained TESOL graduate students at San Francisco State University for ten years, and taught literacy for the International Training Program for Refugees in San Francisco for three years, As to curriculum development, she has written a series of three vocational ESL courses for Bakersfield College and taught VESL for an agricultural company in Kern County. She co-wrote the five-level ESL curriculum now used by the Farm Workers Institute for Educational Leadership Development.

Her interest, moreover, goes beyond teaching and curriculum development to the lives of ESL students because she recognizes the close relationship between their success in college and their family situations and individual histories. As a result of her concern, she is currently working on an oral history project with her ESL students as a way of connecting language learning and community.

Jeannie was a participant in the Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad to Vietnam and Cambodia in July, 2010. Her project, “Connecting Cultures through Oral Histories,” involves exposing students to the culture of Vietnam through multi-media as well as interviews conducted with various Vietnamese people.